What the hell? What's taking so long? I thought they used FedEx to send it to Iraq, and not U.S. Postal Service!
Guess who are those people who are gonna tell Rummy about the location of WMD? The FedEx employees who have shipped it from U.S to Iraq 2 days ago!!!

Funny, it's sure starting to look like a treasure hunt...

I wonder why they can't find them. The U.S. was justifying the war before started by saying that they have detailed information of WMD which were described as "clear and present danger" to the US and the world? Weren’t they declared to exist in significant quantities??
They may be some out there; but U.S. lied to the world; big time!

Aslan,
Do you want to share a tip what numbers will come up in NY lottery draw?

Aslan, excuse while I wrap my head in duct tape so it doesn't explode!

The UN gave Saddam months to smuggle WMDs out of the country, hide some better, or destroy or alter that which he couldn't smuggle or hide. Think about it (if that's possible for you): if someone said, "Aslan, I'm going to come to your house and kill you and take all your stuff in about, say, 6-8 months" what would you do? You'd move your stuff and then hide, wouldn't you? No? Well, okay pretend you have a brain that functions on its own, what would you say? No? Arggh, your skull is thicker than I thought!
Stop eating, Aslan, you're wasting someone else's food. But not Lou's or me's. They're wasting someone else's.

FOG;
Whatever happend to that satellite technology that U.S was using to check Iraq's activities during the last 12 years? Are we suddenly living in the Stone Age that Iraqis can do anything and we won't know? Whatever happend to all those information of "clear and present danger"? Whatever happend to "significant quantities"? What? Suddenly they are not as big as we thought, and suddenly we don't have information as much as we thought we do? Oh sorry, I forgot, maybe those information that we had were fabriacted and fake, just like the ones that Powel presented to the UN 5 week ago!
Its been 4 weeks now, and not one SINGLE one! As I said, there may be some out there, but U.S. did lie a lottttt just to justify the war for oil.

Aslan -

What's up with your name, dude ? Do you really think C.S.Lewis would argue that this is all about oil ? ;)

What form will apologies take when WMD are found? There will be no apology, of course, and these weasels will move on to the next bitch of their miserable lives. So sad....no brain is a terrible thing to waste. For the starving kids we can send over Michael Moore; looks like he could stand a little gnawing of the fat.

Iraq is 437,072 square km in area. If we had 1,000 people all looking for WMD, that's 437 kilometers a piece. If they'd all been surveying since the begining of the war, and didn't cover the same area, they'd still have to cover nearly 15 square kilometers, each, a day. Iraq is roughly the size of California. Lets say that they have 600 tons of chemical or biological agent. That's a lot right? Well, a boxcar can hold roughly 70 tons. That means the total area of that 600 tons of material is roughly 9 boxcars. I bet that, with the resources he had, I could hide 9 boxcars worth of whatever in a country the size of california (burried, secret compartments in trucks, in/under people's houses) such that it would take you years to find it, if you were looking.

Now, add to it that people are still shooting. Every deception possible is being pulled, including, when possible, shipping things across the border. Individuals aren't going out and looking, but rather groups. We have a few clues, but until we interview the right people, and they tell us where to look, it's a a very small - possibly burried - needle in a rather large haystack.

JS

looooooool Dale! That was a good one!
Aslan is a Turkish name, it means Lion. That's why C.S.Lewis used it to name the lion.
I guess I have to say it again, there is SOME WMD there; but it was never as U.S. claimed they were and they did not have information about it as they claimed. If they did, they would have found at least one single sign, not all these smoking guns that turn out to be wrong. Come on guys, be fair, I say there are some there, but it's not as U.S. claimed all the way along. As for Saddam, he is a ruthless dictator and I wish he will be found dead or alive, BUT I think no one has the authority to impose a regime change on another country, by waging an aggressive war on that regime. Such change should born from within, and not imposed from outside. I guess most people think that way; that's why the Bush administration had to use WMD to cover up regime change. As U.S says, this regime has been around for years and years and they have been commiting these crimes for years and years; so where were we all during these, uh, 25 years??? Suddenly Iraqis become soooo important?? How come when Rummy was budies with Saddam, no one was talking about using WMD against Iranians, which UN confirmed right in the days that Rummy was going to Iraq to meet Saddam for the 2nd time.

"Such change should born from within, and not imposed from outside."

Damn, you're stupid. I suppose you think that the Iraqis enjoyed the treatment they've been getting? They tried to change it, you ignoramus, and he killed everyone involved in the coup. He built a large army of men (who had no brains, so they must have been...) spleen-washed into believing that SH was right, or from Allah, or who knows what type of crap they believed.

Thanks for the math, Jason. Somebody at Popular Mechanics told this Turkey-lion that we could now spy on every square inch of Iraq with just half of one satellite.

Oh, and Aslan, maybe Rumsfeld only appeared to be buddies with SH long enough to let him kill a few million bad guys in Iran. It's easier to let your enemies kill each other. But this time, nobody had the balls or firepower. Least of all, Turkey.

Aslan -

Well, if SOME WMD will do, I'll gladly donate some pesticides. It's BURIED in my back yard. And yes, I've got it CAMOUFLAGED, but, hey, I can deal with it. :)

I believe it extremely likely that WMD's exist in Iraq, the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. That said, I am certain that they will be found. Given that we know they are hidden somewhere, if we cannot find them (possible given the size of the country) we will provide them.

At the end of the day we were right to do this. The Iraqis are better off, and no one else had the guts to do what needed to be done. We are not going to suffer a death of a thousand cuts from moral migets in France (who's intelligence agencies are helping the Iraqi leaders escape and moving WMD's to Syria) just because we couldn't get to the sites fast enough.

This is big league hardball. We're protecting civilization here.

Blame Canada...

FOG, fist of all, I have a Turkish name, but I am not from Turkey. Second, I understand my view might make some people uncomfortable; your views are welcome might as well; however, lets try to express our views without descending into invective.
"They tried to change it, and he killed everyone involved in the coup"
Yes, and thats right; they reason is that Bush Sr. told them to do so 11 years ago, and he backed off after Iraqis did!!!
"maybe Rumsfeld only appeared to be buddies"
Are u sure u know what u are talking about? Foreign policy is not the everyday Girlfriend-Boyfreinds relationship, that someone APPEARES to be buddies with someone!! They were making bussines deals to make an oil pipeline from Iraq to Jordan, read some history before commenting.
"we could not spy on every square inch of Iraq with just half of one satellite."
Well they should have said this before the war, not now! Before it was all about WE ARE SURE, WE KNOW WHERE THEY ARE, WE HAVE DETAILED INFORMATION and .... Well they should have said that they don't know shit before, not now!
Their main objective changed from destroying WMD then, to regime change; it shifted from disarming Iraq, to toppling an evil regime. In the news, we suddenly got bombarded with the evil things that have been happening in Iraq for years and years; how come we never heard all these in the past 25 years?! God knows! The Bush Administration and spokespeople have changed their priority list after the fact; go back and read the speeches and press releases before the war. They are now claiming that regime change was always the main target, but that was not what we were hearing all the time during the past 6 month. They just lied to justify the war. I think WMD should stand for Weapons of Mass Distraction, not Weapons of Mass Destruction!!!

- I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. - Voltaire

The US largely avoided getting involved in other people's governments for several reasons. It's really expensive, for one. Nearly $200 dollars a head, just for the first stage.

Secondly, the US is traditionally quite isolationistic. Part of that is geography, besides Canada and Mexico, no one could easily launch an attack on us, and we're on fairly peaceful terms with them. Prior to this century, it was expensive and time consuming for us to get involved in other people's business, because the only way that we could is by ship. Once we gained mass, we were too large for any of the European powers to realistically attack, the logistics just weren't there.

Third, our ability to span the globe really came to it's own in this century.. which, also saw the rise of the USSR. The cold war was in full effect, and it acted as a deterant to both sides- both from the prospective of Nuclear weapons, but also, any conflict that either of us got into, offered far too much danger that our opposite number would get involved. We made life hell for each other on the global stage, and that largely kept us out of people's business.

Saddam is a criminal who kills his own people. How many Iaqis were killed under his rule? How many were forced into excile? He wasn't representative of his people, but he had criminals surpressing the slightest whispers of disodence. Due process was a joke. Rape, murder, torture, were state policy. He killed anyone who disagreed with him. He was a dangerous man, who dreamed of ruling the whole of the middle east with an Iron first.

Weapons of mass destruction will be found. But if they aren't, I think the greater justification for the war is the freedom of the Iraqi people. If they have a government that is representative of it's people, we don't really care how pro american they are. There are no examples of a represnative, democratic nation attacking another.

In the past, military was used in far too freely. The history of old Europe was a bloody history, with warfare defining it's course. That history is shared by most of the old nations, but the US that has never been a policy. We are idealistic and generally, as a whole, don't like the idea of invading another sovern state, but there are two things that compel us to do so.

1) There are ocations, where their are threats from outside our borders, where it becomes obvious that a government's desire is to attack the United States and it's Allies. We are compeled to resist that threat. It is not our intention to wait to be attacked before responding. We will always try the peaceful solution first, but no longer will we resist military force when the peaceful options are exhausted. It is not our intent to go out and topple every government that is anti American, but we will, if necessary, topple governments that are threats. It is right and proper to disarm a bomb before it explodes.

2) We have come to realize, that a government is not always, as ours is, represnative of it's people. We complain that the government doesn't listen to us as much as we would like, but the truth is, what we don't like, we can change. Any time you can get more than 50% of the population to agree with you, you can use your vote to replace whoever you don't like with someone you do. Some governments control their people through fear and intimidation. Some abuse human rights to the point that anyone with a heart should cry for their people. The three million North Koreans who starved because North Korea won't allow serious international aid, and it controls where the food goes to, starving those it thinks may wrong it. Or Iraq, where Saddam has killed millions of his own people in pointless wars and direct violence. Their comes a time where even the human rights groups, and the peace groups, and those with nonviolenct hearts must say that this is enough. I cannot bare it any more. That point should have been reached in Iraq, Afgahanistan, Iran, South Korea, and several other countries a decade ago. Which is more important, the sovernty of a criminal, or the rights of his people, the will of his people? If you have a King where not a single one of his subjects agrees with him, but who's military inforces his will, is his right to be king greater than the right of his people to have a government that represents their interests? Should rulers be able to preach that they're a god, and teach in schools that such and such is your enemy and should be killed? Is that not abuse?

Their are some times where use of force is neccessary, and even some times when it's moral. It is not moral for us to watch the suffering of others and do nothing about it. Sometimes it's hard for us to tell, because places like this it is impossible to talk freely, their is no peace, and people are scared. Saddam will way down the hearts of Iraq for at least 100 years. He has inflicted so much suffering on so many. People where killed, make no mistake, every death is a tragedy. It is costing us both money, and in the court of world oppinion. Still, I think that the freedom of the Iraqi people, and mark my words, they will be free, is worth the costs we've suffered, and will suffer. I think a prosperous Iraq would be good for the region, and would help others to cast off the yoke of terrony. None held that yoke so strongly as Saddam did. Now that he's gone, perhaps it may offer hope for the rest of the world.

"BUT I think no one has the authority to impose a regime change on another country, by waging an aggressive war on that regime. Such change should born from within, and not imposed from outside."

Saddam couldn't be removed from inside. That's obvious if you've been following the happenings there for the past 20+ years. He survived countless coups and assassination attempts, including one by the CIA in 1996. Meanwhile, innocent Iraqis were being butchered and tortured and starved, while he was being "contained". Does that bother you at all?

z

For whatever reason, it just started to bother U.S. officials after 20+ or so! I wonder what that reason might be.

Joy over the removal of Saddam, does not mean joy over an American occupation.

Aslan,

I thing many of us are looking at this all too closely. The WMD were/are there. However, that is only part of a much larger picture. Also consider the full spectrum of motives; personal (Saddam tried to assassinate Bush Sr.), local (Iraqis are relieved of an evil dictator), the war on terrorism (Iraq gave shelter to terrorists), regional (we now have an Iran sandwich with Iraq and Afghanistan as bread), Axis of Evil geopolitics (take one out, others start to fall in line, as seen with Iran wanting to cooperate and North Korea now willing to negotiate).

Do the math on a larger scale. It adds up nicely. Iraq was a smart move. WMD, and maybe the liberation of Iraqis, become secondary or tertiary to the overall scheme.

Just a thought.

Aslan,

One more thing... If you don't think all that radioactive gunk at Al-Tuwaitha isn't WMD, you might think differently if someone puts a drum of it in a Ryder truckload of fuel oil/fertilizer and delivers it nearby. It takes a lot of yellow crime-scene-tape to cordon off an area for 10,000 years, give or take.

This is what I hear over and over again:

Peacenik (quoting Asian): "I think no one has the authority to impose a regime change on another country, by waging an aggressive war on that regime. Such change should born from within, and not imposed from outside."

Rational person: "But... but... if they tried to change the regime from within, they and their families were murdered and/or tortured. When the regime is that brutal and has that much control, it is just too hard to change it from within. And given that huge number of people are killed there by the regime, the deaths incurred in the war are only a few month's normal-course-of-business losses, with the difference that NOW the killing will STOP FOREVER. Don't you care at all about the people being killed, tortured, or imprisoned? Is this abstract idea about not imposing regime change really so important that this kind of thing should be allowed to go on? Would you personally be willing to escort the freed prisoners back to their torture chambers in order to undo the war, if you could?"

Peacenik (quoting Asian): ""For whatever reason, [the sufferings of the Iraqi civilians] just started to bother U.S. officials after 20+ or so! I wonder what that reason might be."

In other words, the peacenik says regime change from outside is wrong, as if that is a fundamental moral principle. When the suffering it is curing in Iraq is pointed out, he changes the subject and says that the hawks are the ones who don't care, because a) it didn't bother them for 20+ years; and/or b) they aren't attacking China, etc, where human rights abuses also don't exist.

That logic is based on the wholly irrational assumption that if one doesn't take military action in every instance at every time that human rights abuses occur, then one doesn't care. Even if it were true, it would remain nothing but a distraction from the question "how could the Iraqi war be wrong, given the suffering it has relieved?" The peacenik can't answer that question in a rational way, so he offers a distraction by saying "Well, really it's YOU who don't care."

Now, proving that I don't care doesn't make you any less guilty of not caring, if indeed you don't. It doesn't change that. It is just a primitive, childlike way of offering distraction from the accusation.

But even as a distraction, it is totally irrational. Accusations based on the argument that if we really cared, we would have waged war earlier or we would be attacking other countries like China where there are abuses ignore the fact that THE COST MAY BE TOO HIGH to wage war in any given case without a number of factors in place. There is always value in saving people from suffering, especially immense suffering such as occurred in Iraq, but the cost is just too high most of the time for it to be practical. In the case of Iraq there are other factors. The harbouring of terrorists, the historical desire to create WMD's which could find themselves in the hands of terrorists, the geopolitical benefits of having a democracy in Iraq, etc.

All those reasons are reasons for the war. The fact that there are other benefits besides relieving the suffering of Iraqi's does not mean that we don't care about that suffering. It means that a number of factors have to line up before we can justify the cost. In my personal opinion, such arguments sense as a way of trying to find SOME way of dealing with the contradition between a self-image of being a compassionate, peace-and-freedom loving, morally superior peacenik who always rejects regime change from outside because regime change from outside is always bad, vs. the fact that such rejection of war in this case, if it had carried the day, would mean that more thousands of more innocent Iraqi's would be tortured and killed every month.

It is a way of trying to deal with that contradiction, but it is ultimately nonsensical and totally self-involved.

The question remains: would you personally escort innocent civilians back to there torture cells to undo the war if you could?

I personally think it is highly likely that the war is justified for other reasons than alleviating the suffering of the Iraqi people. But if not, I am damned proud to be part of a country that can, and did, alleviate that suffering, and deeply glad that it happened, just for its own sake. You should be too.

"For whatever reason, it just started to bother U.S. officials after 20+ or so! I wonder what that reason might be."

Actually it bothered the US enough in 1991 to include a provision in the Gulf War cease fire agreement for Saddam to stop repressing his people. Also, the imposition of the northern and southern no-fly zones was done to protect Shia and Kurd civilians from helicopter gunships after evidence emerged of their slaughter by Saddam.

The US policy about Saddam was clearly stated by George Bush Sr. after the Gulf War. He said in effect that sanctions would not be lifted while Saddam remained in power. The US was hoping that the pressure of sanctions, coupled with his devasting defeat, along with the existing hatred of him within the country would be enough to instigate a successful coup against him. It wasn't enough. Then the US tried covert action against him using a CIA planned coup attempt in 1996, which also failed [it was a spectacular failure]. The final attempt to instigate a coup against him was the feeble Desert Fox operation, a 4 day bombing campaign that had little chance of success, and naturally it failed.

It was then obvious that the only way to remove him was by the use of external military power - an invasion. 911 was the catalyst which gave the US the political will to use overwhelming force to remove him. The policy of regime change though dated back to 1991. Ironically, a contributing factor to Osama's 911 terror was the damage done to Iraq through sanctions, and the presence of US troops in Saudia Arabia enforcing the southern no-fly zone.

z

"I personally think it is highly likely that the war is justified for other reasons than alleviating the suffering of the Iraqi people. But if not, I am damned proud to be part of a country that can, and did, alleviate that suffering, and deeply glad that it happened, just for its own sake. You should be too."

Well said, Gary. A great post.

z

"For whatever reason, it just started to bother U.S. officials after 20+ or so! I wonder what that reason might be."
Actually it bothered the US enough in 1991 to include a provision in the Gulf War cease fire agreement for Saddam to stop repressing his people. Also, the imposition of the northern and southern no-fly zones was done to protect Shia and Kurd civilians from helicopter gunships after evidence emerged of their slaughter by Saddam.

Interesting you brought up helicopter gunships, we sold hundreds to Turkey "since 1991," which were used expressly for slaughtering Kurdish villages by the thousands.

That being said, I do think Saddam deserved to be removed by military force, and I do think he has chemical weapons.

But I also hope everyone saying the UN monitoring, disarmement process generally is a waste of time might wish to consider the rest of the world. What we are going to do without the UN monitoring and security council sanctions, which are the teeth in every important WMD treaty for chemical, nuclear and bio weapons control which we created?Do you think anyone is going to sign onto a resoluton like 1441 now? Are we going to invade the 50 or so countries which are threshold on these waepons and several dozen of which have populations three, five or ten times the size of Iraq with militaries 10 and 20 times as capable?

It's real simple. Oil good, Saddam bad. Tyranny bad, liberation good. People free, Saddam dead.

Why are lefties standing still to endlessly parse and pound everything anyone ever said about anything? Get a life and get on with it. Geez.

"Why are lefties standing still to endlessly parse and pound everything anyone ever said about anything?"

You are right, why should we go over the fact that Republican leaders and policies directly and indirectly supported Saddam, his murders, his weapons and his aggression.

Only an idiot would want to know the why and how of a problem, and how to avoid it in future.

Before the attack, we claimed we Knew there were WMDs in Iraq -- but the innumerable thousands of tons and at least hundreds of specific weapons.

We just Knew they were going to be used.

We just Knew we would find them by going to war.

It's been a full month. During that time, we've had at least 3,000 and arguably 5,000 personnel on the ground with the Specific mission of finding WMDs. We've had >30k tactical air strikes on weapons emplacements.

Number of Known WMDs found to date?

None

Number of Known WMDs destroyed in action?

None.

That's just a Fact -- I am Not making it up.

The Aussies are sending another 500 personnel, we are sending another thousand, and the reward/bribe for any Iraqi who can lead us to Known WMDs is at US$200,000.

I say again -- if we do Not know of them now (and clearly we do not) then ferdamshut we did Not know about them before we went to war either.

Is that so Very difficult to understand?

Apparently it is.

Go figure.

Okay, Romper Room it is ...

Who wants to show me the proof that there are no WMD in Iraq? You guys talk like you've seen it. I want to see it, too.

Saying we haven't found any yet doesn't prove squat and certainly isn't going to change my mind, so don't waste your finger tips on that tune anymore.

Aslan asks... "In the news, we suddenly got bombarded with the evil things that have been happening in Iraq for years and years; how come we never heard all these in the past 25 years?! God knows! "

You can ask CNN's Eason Jordan about that, for starters. He knows why not.